“Lovely and Amazing” is a powerful call to arms – a women’s movie that casts aside the banalities of its genre to look at a group of women who have become incapable of separating physical attractiveness from self-worth.
In broad outline, a film about a dysfunctional group of mothers and daughters probably seems tediously familiar. But the picture goes out of its way to avoid simplistic characterizations; it appreciates the full mystery and complexity of its female characters even while exploring the causes of their neuroses.
For Elizabeth (Emily Mortimer), the quietest character, the problem is obvious to everyone but herself. As an aspiring Hollywood actress, she has committed herself to an industry in which body distortion is practically an occupational hazard. She has been poked, prodded and examined for physical defects in every audition she’s ever had, and her self-esteem plummets with each rejection.
It doesn’t help matters when she gets phone calls from her sister, Michelle (Catherine Keener), who likes to make fun of her yoga exercises and tell her that her hair looks frizzy. A former homecoming queen with an aging complex, Michelle poses as a model of self-control but uses her surly attitude as a buffer between herself and the world of real jobs and adult responsibilities.
Their mother, Jane (Brenda Blethyn), occupies the center of the movie’s neurotic storm, and the manner in which we see patterns of self destruction linking one generation to the next is oddly poignant. Scheduling a liposuction treatment as the movie begins, Jane’s lifelong struggle with both age and weight has finally come to a head.
Complicating matters slightly, Jane has recently adopted a third child named Annie (Raven Goodwin), who at the age of eight already has weight issues of her own. In addition, Annie is black, and even more self-image problems abound when the child begins to wonder if it might be better to look like her mother and older sisters. Goodwin is wonderfully natural in the role, which is essential in scenes where she must appear to be digesting these questions for the first time.
As one would expect, Keener and Blethyn are excellent at portraying characters at their wits’ end, and Mortimer’s sad, quiet performance is a fresh air that lifts the film.
Still, the biggest revelation is writer-director Nicole Holofcener. By imagining the characters in “Lovely & Amazing,” she has given audiences four women to care about and treasure. The words and scenes she has provided in her script are carefully instructive without being contrived. Even though the characters are lost in miscommunication, the film is aware of exactly what it wants to say, building to dramatic payoffs largely through subtext and observation.
Like director Todd Solondz, Holofcener prefers a painfully neutral tone. We don’t always know whether to cringe or chuckle, and nowhere is this more obvious than in the movie’s most talked-about scene, in which Elizabeth instructs her lover (Dermot Mulroney) to point out her every flaw as she stands naked before him.
Viewers tend to react to this scene in either stunned amazement or fits of uncomfortable laughter, as the Mulroney character coldly dissects her every curve and orifice. The point, however, is that Elizabeth is neither hurt nor amused. She needs his criticism in the same way a hypochondriac is relieved to be informed that he has finally contracted a chronic disease.
The scene is about emptiness and need, and it is the perfect centerpiece to a film that explores these issues as honestly as any in recent memory.
Above all else, “Lovely & Amazing” is a welcome break from the male obsessions that dominate Hollywood movies. True, women are entertaining as saucy prostitutes, supportive lovers and beautiful victims of circumstance. But they also make full, well-developed characters with ideas, ambitions, hang-ups and idiosyncrasies. Here is a movie that understands and celebrates that.
